Ghapama is a stuffed pumpkin, which is a national dish in Armenia. It is mainly made in both autumn and at Christmas. During Armenian weddings it is like a symbol of abudance.
Once the kernel was cooked with grains, meat, fresh fruits, but the most popular version is a pumpkin stuffed with dried fruits, nuts and honey.
Ingredient
pumpkin
rice – 0.5 kg
apricot – 100g
prunes – 100g
pistachio – 100 g
nuts – 100g
sugar
honey
cinnamon
butter.
Preparation
First you need to cut the pumpkin tail so that is looks like a cover, then remove the edges and cover inside with a thin layer of sugar. It would be better, if the pumpkin has a thin peel, which makes it easy to be cooked.
Then boil the rice, adding salt to taste. The rice should be round for making it sticky and creating flattened appearance after slicing. The choice of dried fruits is very important: they should be both sweet and sour. Dried apricots and prunes, together with pistachios and nuts, fry in butter, then add the honey until the kernels are covered, and in the end add a pinch of cinnamon.
The rice and the mass of the dried fruits should be half-boiled so that the kernel can get the required degree of boiling after stuffing the pumpkin and placing it in the oven. Then mix the boiled rice and fried nuts and fill in the pumpkin. Ghapama let in the oven for 30- 40 minutes depending on the size of the pumpkin.
It is served in a cold state, preferably with sweet wine.
